Previews

World Championship Pool 2004

Jaleco Entertainment prepares to bring Europe's most popular snooker sim -- and the first next-generation ball-knocker with online play -- to the U.S. of A.

Spiffy:

Solid ball physics; online play in both Xbox and PS2 versions.

Iffy:

Rough player animations; weak commentary; no-frills career mode.

Pool sims are surprisingly sparse for this generation of consoles; in fact, the only one I can think of is the PS2 launch title Q-Ball Billiards Master, enormous piles of which are still for sale at my local Fry's Electronics. I mean, what does it say about the genre when the best example on current hardware is the "Monkey Billiards" mini-game in Super Monkey Ball?

Fortunately, Jaleco has chosen to address this sorry situation by licensing, localizing, and renaming World Championship Snooker 2003, developed in Britain by Blade Interactive and published in Europe by Codemasters. World Championship Pool 2004 has four modes of play, and we'll go through them in the order that the game presents 'em, because we're crazy like that.

"Pool" offers 8-ball and 9-ball variations, and a one- or two-player match, or a one- to sixteen-player tournament. You can customize virtually every rule of either game, from where you're allowed to place a ball in hand to whether or not you have to call a pocket before each shot. (It amazes me how many people don't know the official rules of pool.)

"Snooker" is a more complex and strategic "cue sport" than pool, and Pool 2004 unfortunately assumes you already know how it's played; while the game has a brief description of the rules, the game itself has bupkis. I hope Jaleco and Blade are able to wedge a snooker tutorial into Pool 2004 before its release, even if it's just a quick-and-dirty narrated video clip.

"Trick Shot" is a series of 23 increasingly nasty, uh, trick shots, each one given an intimidating name like "4 Ball Split," "Hallucination," and "The Shuttle." When you complete the initial 20 trick shots, a new "Trick Shot Challenge" mode is unlocked. Beat this mode before running out of continues and you can unlock the legendary 21st, 22nd, and 23rd trick shots. There's a prerecorded demo of each shot so you know what you're trying to accomplish.

The game's aiming system is all about the triangles.

"Fun Games" has half a dozen two-player-exclusive variants of billiards, such as "Countdown" (9-ball with a shot clock), "Clearance" (9-ball in a race against the clock), and "Minefield" (8-ball with areas of the table that send balls soaring into the air). I myself might've chosen the description "Goofy Games" for this mode, but that's not quite as catchy, is it?

The core of Pool 2004 is the career mode, in which you create a male or female player (choosing from a limited selection of heads and bodies) and work your way from a feeble 71st in the world to top of the pops. The ladder is populated with fictional and real-life players, including such sharks as Earl "The Pearl" Strickland and Efren Reyes, whose skills you've likely seen on ESPN2. (You'd better watch ... 'cause it might happen!) This loosely structured mode allows you to play as many seasons as you need to earn the #1 spot, and to build up enough winnings to purchase all of the unlockables, which range from different outfits to better cues.